The Oprah Podcast
Oprah and a Doctor Explore What Near Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond
Tue, 29 Apr 2025
BUY THE BOOK! "After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond" by Dr. Bruce Greyson https://books.apple.com/us/book/after/id1521273820 This episode of The Oprah Podcast features Dr. Bruce Greyson, one of the world's leading experts on near death experiences. As a scientist and physician, Dr. Greyson has been studying these fascinating phenomena for decades. He and Oprah dive deep into near death encounters and speak with people who have undergone their own transformative episodes, including Oscar nominated actor Jeremy Renner, who described his event as harrowing but also exhilaratingly peaceful. Their stories reveal striking similarities and shed light on how facing death transformed their understanding of not only life, but what comes after. Most people come away from a near death experience with an expanded view of consciousness and consider the possibility that death might not be the end. As Dr. Greyson explains, this “knowing” has caused people around the world to reexamine their own life's journey and view death as nothing to fear. "My Next Breath: A Memoir" by Jeremy Renner https://books.apple.com/us/book/my-next-breath/id6711353080 "7 Lessons from Heaven" by Dr. Mary C. Neal https://books.apple.com/us/book/7-lessons-from-heaven/id1200283041 "To Heaven and Back" by Dr. Mary C. Neal https://books.apple.com/us/book/to-heaven-and-back/id528963069 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@Oprah Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprah/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happens after we die?
Yes, yes.
I thought, oh, that makes sense. That is complete karmic sense that the life review would be that you feel everything you've ever done.
Yes. Yes. Yes, you really feel things from other people's perspective. And Tom talks about beating someone up when he was a teenager and feeling it from that person's point of view or doing something nasty to his grandmother and felt it from her perspective. But I've also heard from people that...
they experienced not only what they were doing to other people, but they experienced the other person's emotions, which made them more compassionate. Yes.
That's what he was saying. My abuse to my wife, I felt how she felt, and therefore I come back trying not to be that kind of person.
But they often feel things that they didn't do, but other people did to them. For example, someone I knew was a woman who had an abusive childhood. And when she went back through her life review, she experienced her mother beating her from the mother's perspective. and realized her mother was trapped in this mode and she didn't know how else to relate to her daughter. Wow.
And she came away feeling a tremendous compassion for her mother for the first time in her life. And Tom and this woman, they all come back with this idea that we're all the same. There's no barrier between me and you. And this leads them basically to the golden rule, which is part of every religion we have on this planet.
Yeah.
That when you hurt someone else, you're hurting yourself as well. Yeah.
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Chapter 2: What are near-death experiences?
I remember waking up and my brother being at the end of my bed and I had no idea what had happened. I was like, oh, what are you doing here? And everything that I did after that, you know, I was supposed to release an album. I was supposed to go on tour all in 2023. I was supposed to do all these things that people expected of me and that, you know, needed from me.
And it took me so long to even be able to think about trivial things of the world, like money or fame or getting my music out there. It was just, I had this... spiritual experience that just made me want to love on people and love on my family. And it made me realize that there's nothing in this world that matters. You can't take it with you when you go.
You can get a Grammy, you can get money, you can have beautiful homes, but you're not taking it with you. And so the legacy you leave behind is the most important thing and the love that you leave behind with your family.
I loved earlier when Jeremy was on, Jeremy Renner, and he was saying, love is the only thing you take with you. Love is the only thing you take with you. Do you have a question for Dr. Grayson?
I actually do. So after I had my experience, it was so hard for me to acclimate. Do you find that that is common from people that have had near-death experiences to be able to kind of go back to their hustle?
Yes, it's very common. People differ how hard it is because some of them have a spiritual life to begin with and others don't. And we've done some studies recently looking at who people turn to for help. and what types of help and which ones don't.
And what seems to be most helpful is talking to other people who have had near-death experiences and who have been through this before and come up with their own ways of dealing with this. Also, if you can find a group of other experiencers who have gone through this, they may be the most helpful thing for you.
And I hear you have an album coming out this summer, right? I do. Did you write a song about this experience?
I'm actually writing several. It's funny because we started this song called Coming Back to You. And it's not just about my husband. I love him so much. He's perfect. In fact, while I was in the hospital, I had Bell's palsy and one eyeball was open. And I knew I was going to marry him when my sister told me that he just went over and just closed that little eyeball for me.
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